Beneficiary audit
We review every registered account, insurance policy, and pension to confirm beneficiary designations are current, correctly named, and aligned with your will and family wishes.
Estate Planning
What happens to what you've built when you're no longer here?
Terravnova helps you structure beneficiary designations, minimize probate exposure, and create a transfer plan your family can follow without uncertainty.
Estate planning is retirement planning — not a separate conversation
Too many Canadians treat estate planning as something to handle “eventually” — and their families pay the price in probate fees, family disputes, and avoidable tax at death. Terravnova folds estate review into every client relationship because the decisions you make at 60 about beneficiary designations, account ownership, and insurance directly affect whether your estate transfers cleanly or gets caught in a nine-month probate process. We coordinate with your notary or estate lawyer, provide the financial modelling they need, and make sure the plan on paper matches the accounts you actually hold.
What Terravnova covers in estate planning
Financial coordination — not legal drafting — is our lane. We work alongside your legal counsel.
Probate minimization
By structuring account ownership and beneficiary designations correctly, many assets can pass outside the estate entirely — avoiding Québec's tariff on probate and delays for your heirs.
Charitable giving structures
If leaving a legacy to a cause matters to you, we model donor-advised funds, charitable remainder trusts, and direct bequest options to maximize the gift while reducing your estate's tax burden.
Multi-generational coordination
For clients with adult children or grandchildren, we model how a planned transfer of TFSA room, life insurance proceeds, or real estate can benefit the next generation without triggering unnecessary deemed-disposition tax.
What we don't do — and why that matters
Terravnova is a financial planning firm, not a law firm. We do not draft wills, powers of attorney, or legal trust documents — that requires a notary or estate lawyer. What we do is produce the financial analysis and account-level recommendations that make your legal counsel's work faster and more accurate. If you don't yet have a notary, we can refer you to professionals we've worked with across Montréal. The cleaner your financial picture going into a will review, the lower your legal fees and the more precisely your wishes can be documented.
After my husband passed, we discovered three accounts with no named beneficiary — they went through probate and it took eight months. I came to Terravnova determined not to put my children through that. They found two more gaps I didn't know about and had everything restructured within a month.
Suzanne Pelletier, Saint-Lambert
Let's make sure your estate plan matches your accounts
Book an estate review call and we'll identify any beneficiary gaps or probate exposures in your current setup.